Cannes to close with a nail-biter ending

CANNES, France (AP) ? Steven Spielberg will close out the 66th Cannes Film Festival with a nail-biter of a finale.

The festival's top award, the prestigious Palme d'Or, will be handed out to one of 20 films in competition Sunday night in Cannes. Unlike in recent years, there's no obvious frontrunner for the Palme. Spielberg is presiding over the nine-member jury that will choose the winner of one of cinema's highest honors.

Critical polls have ranked Abdellatif Kechiche's lesbian coming-of-age tale "Blue is the Warmest Color" the highest. Prognosticators have also predicted Asghar Farhadi's domestic drama "The Past" will take the Palme. And others believe it will go to the Coen brothers' 1960s folk tale, "Inside Llewyn Davis." (The Coens won the Palme in 1991 for "Barton Fink.")

Other films are in the mix, too, including Paolo Sorrentino's rollicking Roman party "The Great Beauty," James Gray's 1920s Ellis Island melodrama "The Immigrant," and Kore-eda Hirokazu's switched-at-birth drama "Like Father, Like Son."

But it will ultimately come down to what Spielberg and his jury ? which includes Nicole Kidman and Ang Lee ? think was the top film at Cannes.

Last year, Michael Haneke's "Amour" was the far-and-away favorite, and went on to win best foreign language film at the Oscars and earn the rare best picture nomination for a non-English film. In 2011, Terrence Malick's cosmic rumination "The Tree of Life" won the Palme d'Or.

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jake_coyle

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cannes-close-nail-biter-ending-133057201.html

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